The Mayor of Williams Lake will be off to Vancouver next month to attend the 77th Annual Truck Loggers Association Convention and Trade Show.
Walt Cobb has been invited to participate in a panel to speak about the importance of forestry in Williams Lake, titled “Protect Our Working Forest.”
“It had actually all come about from UBCM and the truck rally, and they had breakfast down there with the truck loggers,” Cobb said.
“I had gone to the breakfast and had talked to a few people and they decided that they would like me to be a guest speaker or panelist.”
Cobb said he has heard many concerns, and that there are truck loggers who have not been working since break-up in January-February because of our forest policies.
“We’re harvesting less than 1 percent of what’s available and I think we need to look at it when we figure out the annual allowable cut (AAC), and to me, in my mind, we did this during the land use planning stages. We need to determine what percentage of our province is harvestable and to make it safe not only for fires but to make sure we don’t have a bunch of dead trees,” Cobb said.
“So I think we need to review the way we determine the AAC and we need to set aside land strictly for forestry like we do for mining, like we do for agriculture, like we do for other things. Every time we set up a new park guess where we take it from, we take it from the forested land. Every time we set up for mountain bike trails where do we take it from, we take it from forested lands that we could be harvesting wood from. What do we do when we put in a new subdivision, we take it away from the forested land. So we’ve got to relook at the amount of land that’s available that we could harvest and make money at and support everything else that we do in the community.”
The Annual Truck Loggers Association Convention and Trade Show runs from Jan. 15 to Jan. 17. It attracts more than 1,200 delegates and offers sessions that address many issues affecting forestry and impacting timber harvesting contractors and the communities that rely on it.